Revised Scenes from History, Nº 1

Were People in the Great War As Enlightened As Modern Folk

[An officer, in a clean, well-tailored uniform, saunters into a filthy trench, somewhere near Passchendaele, in 1917, shortly before a scheduled attack.]

  

Sergeant:  Officer present! Attention! Sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  At ease, men; standing to attention is bad for the back. Ah, good, those ladders seem well placed and properly supported.  Now are your weapons nice and safe?  Ammunition safely put away?

Sergeant:  Sah, yes, sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  You, Private—

Sergeant:  Hatkins, sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Ah, Atkins, is your bayonet clean? We don’t want an enemy to catch a nasty infection.

Pvt. Hatkins:  Clean, sir, and sharp, sir!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Sharp?  Sharp!

Sergeant:  Well-honed, sah, razor-edged, ὀξύς, acutus—

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Yes, yes, I know.  Are any other bayonets similarly sharpened, Sergeant?

Sergeant:  Why, all of them are, of course, sah.  We must all be keen, and I always keep a sharp look-out, sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  But we can’t have that—someone may get hurt!   Dull these bayonets immediately!

  

[After a few seconds of stunned immobility, a few of the soldiers begin to strike their bayonets against rocks.]

  

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Hey, what are you doing? Stop!  That’s dangerous!  Someone could put out an eye!

Pvt. Hatkins:  We have no proper tools with us here, sir.

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Sergeant, I leave it to you to ensure that these men dull their bayonets, and safely; but I don’t want to hear that you’ve been shouting at them.  It could harm their hearing, and it lowers their self-esteem.  I, meanwhile, have an appointment to meet Field-Marshall Haig; I must talk to him about this foolhardy practice of firing artillery shells.  Farewell, men.

  

[The officer departs.  The men murmur and mutter.]

  

Sergeant:  All right, shaarp, you lot; you heard the officer, we need to devise a tool to blunt the bayonets.

Pvt. Hatkins:  How, Sarge?

Sergeant:  Men, form a file.

Pres. Obama Sued by Empty Suit

We are shocked to learn, by way of various news services and the neo-neocon blog, some stunning legal news.  By documents lodged in a Washington District Federal Court, yesterday, an empty suit is suing U.S. President Barack Obama for defamation of character and fraudulent appropriation of identity: 

The plaintiff’s attorney, Nigel Barratry, who has entered amicus curiae briefs and a pair of shorts, explained yesterday that he will, conjointly, also lodge a private prosecution, and that the criminal and civil charges include misuse of usufructuary, misprision, plagiarism, peculation, subrogation, and (by alleging further that the defendant was ineligible to be a candidate for president) obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, and treason.

Pres. Obama, according to the suit, has given empty suits everywhere a bad name.
The White House has not yet issued an official response.  An inside source, however, said that the briefs had no legs to stand on, and that the President would make an eloquent response as soon as Prof. Bill Ayers could be located to write it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Barratry further revealed that his firm, Amble & Chaser have received scores of communications from numerous other items and apparel—such as windbags, douche-bags, sock-puppets, marionettes and windsocks—, which, feeling similarly deflated and injured, effete and useless,  have expressed a wish to join the empty suit’s suit suitably thereunto.